The Underworld

"The Underworld? I'd stick to your studies young man. You don't have time for myth and legend. Where did you read about that? The Tuko Codex? Oh dear. Yes, it's a fake. No, I don't care what Golad says about it, he might be head librarian, but he's not studied these things. Don't go listening to him about reading."

A hidden cave entrance, buried somewhere on Pande, unknown to even the gods currently residing in this world. The dimensional prison of not only The Failed, powerful and egotistical creatures from before the dawn of history, but also the Usurpers, the Secundae gods who imprisoned their parents and ultimately overthrown by their children.

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Summary

Before humans were conceived of, before even the world that would become known as Pande was created, the Primordials attempted to sate their creative urges by making creatures of a power and ego closer to their own. Each one was unique, its own individual type, based wholly on the whim of the Primordial that created it. These beings had immense capability, despite being grounded in the physical plane, but used their abilities for purely selfish gains.
Whole swathes of the physical plane were devastated, purely to sate a destructive urge, or other, lesser living creatures tortured and consumed for pure pleasure. A few of these creatures were not entirely amoral, and did attempt to exist in a non-destructive manner, but their egos were still as powerful as their creators, and eventually they succumbed to their own selfishness.
The Primordials were aghast at their failure, but unwilling to simply unmake their creations. After all, the fault was with them, not these creatures, who were acting purely in the manner of their own nature. They appealed to Foret, who along with his partner Vileru, had remained aloof from the physical plane.
Foret saw the grief of his fellow Primordials and acquiesced to their pleas, creating a pocket universe, attached to the primary one, infinite, yet bounded, into which these creations were shepherded. Most did not go willingly, seeing this universe for what it was; a prison and form of sequestration. That it contained enough space and mindless matter for them to sate their urges was irrelevant. The Primordials were far more powerful than their creations, however, and could not be resisted. The entrance could not be closed entirely, and so the Primordials hid it within this pocket world, now called 'The Underworld', relying on their creation's inability to find it to keep them there, and watched it with a wary eye. Most of the Failed, as they were now called, have remained forever imprisoned.
When Pande was made, the opening was placed on this world, buried deep underground and each of the Primordials took turns ensuring its contents did not escape, but with the creation of the Primae, and the departure of the Primordials from the physical plane, watch over this entrance lapsed. The Primae of discord and chaos, Nexi found the entrance and saw in the Failed almost unlimited potential for disruption. After a number of incidents where many humans were killed driving a Failed back into its prison, Sis'retyr was born, and given the task of guarding the entrance.
He only failed once in his duty, at least according to his own reckoning, when Turbal convinced him of the need to imprison the Primae during the Usurpation. He remained committed to this course of action, even when appealed to relent by Pande herself, and only allowed the release of one of the Primae, to counter the actions of Nexi. Eventually, he realised he had been deceived, and released the rest of the Primae, taking the Usurpers into the Underworld in their place.
Today, the entrance is hidden, unknown to almost all creatures on the physical plane, even the Inheritor Gods themselves. However, rare interactions of certain aspects of the physical plane, such as Pande's two moons, can result in a thinning of the boundary between the two worlds, and the occasional escape of The Failed.

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Historical Basis

Imperial scholars and theologians debate the actual existence of this entrance to the Underworld. It is not mentioned by any words recorded said by any of the Inheritor Gods, and is only known about through ancient texts and myths from before even the Usurpation.
Current thinking is that although the Usurper gods are imprisoned somewhere, that somewhere must be far from Pande, and far from the Empire. The thought of such powerful beings housed in such close proximity to the humans that the Inheritors loved so much is terrifying. The stories of the other creatures, the Failed, are considered fanciful by even the most radical of scholars, who ascribe them to fairy tales intended to keep people in line.

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Date of Setting

Prehistory